Energy conversion engines have long been employed to recover process heat and convert it to mechanical energy as in the familiar Rankine cycle. Typical systems are in a series of patents by Alexander Kalina and various coworkers such as U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,095,708; 5,029,444; 4,982,568; 4,899,545; 4,732,005; 4,604,867; 4,586,340; 4,548,043; and 4,489,563. Scharpf, U.S. Pat. No. 5,842,345 teaches the use of two component working fluids, preferring ammonia and water, in a heat recovery method. DeVault U.S. Pat. No. 5,555,738, teaches use of an ammonia water refrigeration system to cool the inlet air of a gas turbine for improved efficiency.
The art has not heretofore recognized the unexpected advantage of using a two component working fluid which is separated into it's a more volatile and a less volatile component and the more volatile component used in a refrigerant loop to provide refrigeration capacity then recombined with the less volatile component to provide a multi-component working fluid for heat recovery.